


rest and recovery

by reform



Category: Be More Chill - Iconis/Tracz
Genre: ???? i think, Implied boyf riends, M/M, Slow Burn, also disclaimer appearances are based on a local production i saw, expensive headphones, hence long haired rich, i wrote this mostly back in february, meant to be a multichapter thing but dont get yr hopes up, michael-centred, might do some pov switching though??? We Will See
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-19
Updated: 2020-08-19
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:14:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25983421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reform/pseuds/reform
Summary: So much to unpack, Michael thought decidedly, breaking his gaze away from it all. How long had his fists been clenched like this? He uncurled them and winced at the red marks buried inside. The pain hadn’t registered.And that thought brought him back to Rich -- Why is it always Rich? Had it always been?
Relationships: Rich Goranski & Michael Mell, Rich Goranski/Michael Mell
Kudos: 11





	rest and recovery

**Author's Note:**

> tw for implied suicide attempt and self harm

The play was, nicely put, a fucking disaster.

He couldn’t say for certain what really motivated him to join Mr Heere’s quest to, uh, “put his big boy pants on”. Sure, it was super fucking creepy to see a fully adult man stumble awkwardly into view from his front porch, where he was smoking his fifth cigarette, and burning all the stupid shit that just didn’t matter anymore. Magic the Gathering card? Gone. Weird Al concert ticket stub? Yeah, no, that’s out too. He later regretted it, of course, and tried his best to salvage the pieces. He came away with blackened fingertips and a sour taste in his mouth. He’d always been the impulsive type. So easy to cling, so easy to detach. 

But it wasn’t even really him that ran up to the stage from the audience, Mountain Dew Red in hand. Hesitate to say, it was as if Michael was possessed by a SQUIP of his own. On second thought, it was probably the better side of his conscience. Great that pretty much everybody in his grade besides him got hospitalised one way or another, leaving him with plenty of time to wander the sullen halls of the hospital, visiting everyone out of politeness. Westborough was closed until further notice, no doubt dealing with countless lawsuits and finding a way to save their public image. It was a miracle it hadn’t made national news, made waves in the international community, lobby groups crying violations against privacy and human rights. No fucking way anyone in their little community would forget, anyway. It’d be immortalised in yearbooks, in whispers and urban legends echoed through the generations. 

Anyway, Michael didn’t really remember what Westborough looked like anymore. It’d been four months. He pretty much considered the hospital his new home now, knowing the rooms and their occupants off by heart.

So it was strange to find, on his fifty-sixth visit to Jeremy in the hospital (yes, he’d counted), Rich, staring solemnly at Jeremy’s figure lying placidly in the uncreased sheets. He didn’t even notice Michael at the door, just seemingly deep in introspection. Rare for someone like him.

He settled into the chair opposite Rich, still somehow not disturbing him.

“Hey,” Michael said experimentally. He didn’t know him. He just wanted time alone with Jeremy for a bit. Whatever Rich was doing, it could wait.

“Headphones kid.” Rich didn’t even look up.

Michael felt his fingernails dig into his palms. “ _ Michael.” _

“I’m sorry,” came Rich’s reply, all too quick, all too…  _ lispy.  _ “That… Past me, that wasn’t me, god,  _ Michael.  _ Michael, I’m… ” That’s when Rich actually looked up, and Michael saw he had been crying.

A painful pause.

“I… I should go,” Michael began, physically having stood up out of the chair but spiritually already outside the room. Rich just hiccupped and took a shaky breath, drawing his arms in closer.

“I know you’re about to say it wasn’t my fault,” Rich said as Michael parted his lips. “Yeah?”

Michael lowered himself back down into the chair, his head suddenly feeling heavy. He had come all this way to see Jeremy, and now he was facing the kid who had pretty much ground his school reputation to dust. He breathed out and laced his fingers together one by one. 

“How did you know?” he managed. 

“I thought -- that, that this,” Rich said, gesturing to Jeremy, “was the last person I needed to apologise to. I don’t know. It -- he might be. But, of  _ course _ , like I have for the past three years… I forgot about you.” 

Michael furrowed his brows and blew air out of his nose, not honouring Rich with a reply.

After a moment: “I’m sorry, that was stupid.” Rich hit his head forcefully with the base of his palm. Despite himself, Michael flinched at the impact. “Anyway, point is, everyone I talked to insisted I shouldn’t apologise, that it wasn’t my fault… It was the SQUIP.” Michael couldn’t miss the involuntary shiver that physically rocked Rich as he said the name.

“And you think it’s somehow actually your fault?” Michael asked incredulously, not being able to resist laughter. “Nobody likes a martyr.”

“You f--” Rich stopped himself, and hit his head again, twice. “Yes. It is my fault.”

_ Stop hitting yourself, please, I hate this, I want to go home, _ Michael begged internally, and then: “How could you possibly still blame yourself?”

“Well.” Rich’s eyes flicked to Jeremy, whom Michael was constantly forgetting was there. Still breathing. Still unconscious. “If it wasn’t for me, none of this would’ve happened. If I didn’t tell Jeremy to get his SQUIP, if I didn’t  _ listen _ to my SQUIP, if I wasn’t such a hopeless loser in freshman year, all of this…” Jeremy,  _ again _ . “Not to mention what an asshole I’ve been to you since forever. That too.”  _ Cause or effect?  _

Michael’s head was beginning to swim. “Well…” He was at a loss for words. Rich had a point. 

Rich just nodded his head slowly at the preceding silence, then sat back in his chair. 

“Well,” he echoed, “I guess you  _ deserve _ my apology then.”

“I suppose I do,” Michael said dumbly, feeling red heat rise.

An odd silence followed, allowing Michael to remember once more about Jeremy, a white sea separating him and Rich. He was looking at Jeremy again, and Michael saw strands of brown hair come loose and fall as Rich minutely hunched forward in his wheelchair, drawing into himself millimetre by millimetre. It was mesmerising. So much so that Michael almost didn’t catch when Rich began to speak. 

“I’m sorry for treating you so badly these past few years. SQUIP or not, I… needed someone to look down on. You were -- I thought you were an easy target. And I ruined your life. I’m so, so sorry, Michael.” 

It didn’t even seem like an apology, somehow. Michael’s thoughts were just all too jumbled to untangle the threads of context, logic and implication that connected the two, so he just settled for a slight bow of the head and hoped that Rich wouldn’t ask what it meant.

“You know something?” Rich said suddenly, tone a stark contrast to the atmosphere. “You know when I set the fire…” He looked back up at Michael, waiting. Michael just shrugged noncommittally.

“Well. You know about Jake, right?”

“I saw him. I heard he was just about to get out of his cast too, before the play…” Michael winced.

“Actually… the whole reason that he broke his legs in the first place…” Rich turned his lips up in a sad imitation of a smile. “Yeah.”

“But he -- he was trying to escape, wasn’t he? That’s the story I heard, at least--”

“Escape saving me, Michael. He was  _ saving me _ .”

“But you were perfectly capable of --”

_ Oh. _

Michael found his hands at his mouth, staring desperately at Rich. The faux-smile still played hauntingly on his face. 

“I’m--” Michael started, but Rich just shrugged.

“Whatever. It was the SQUIP. I just wanted it out, and if I needed to…” Rich trailed off, eyes averting. “I felt like it was the only thing I could do.” 

“You should’ve, you  _ could’ve  _ come to me!” Michael shouts, before realising where he is. More quieter: “I could’ve -- I knew somebody. I could’ve helped you that night, is all I’m saying.”

“I was really stupid back then, and besides, in the morning my SQUIP would’ve had it at me for talking with a loser.” He didn’t even finish saying the last word before he hit himself in the head again.

“You should stop doing that.”

“What?”

“This.” Michael mimed the action. “Do you not know you’re doing it?”

“I guess not. My s--” Rich stopped himself, shook his head. “Never mind.”

“No, what is it?” 

“It’s  _ nothing _ ,” he snapped. He jerked his palm up, then stopped, off Michael’s expression.

“I think that’s… technically self harm,” Michael said, after a moment.

“Not if it’s my SQUIP.”

A moment of stunned silence before Michael leaned out of his chair, disbelieving

“You… still have your SQUIP?” Michael asked. “How? Didn’t Christine’s one deactivate the others? Like a chain reaction?”

“I don’t  _ know _ ,” Rich sighed frustratedly. “Maybe it’s how long I had it for. Maybe it’s because I depended on it so much that it just… deeply ingrained itself into my brain. I think it’s a part of me, now.  _ Forever. _ ” 

Michael shuddered, then remembered Jeremy, one more time. He stared at him for a moment, trying to figure out the strange sinking feeling in his stomach. 

“Wait, so… You can still hear it? It can control you?” 

“I can’t hear or see it anymore, but it can still kinda do things. To me. Like, uh…” Rich fumbled, fidgeting with his hands, searching for a rational explanation.

“You shivered earlier - that might’ve been it. I get it.” Michael said quickly.

Rich nodded sadly. “Most of the time I don’t even notice. Maybe I can’t even distinguish it from my own… actions. Like I don’t have free will. Hence the...” He touched his palm gently to his forehead and sighed.

“That sucks,” breathed Michael, again at a loss for words. “What can I do?”

“What do you mean, like to…”

“Help. If it helps, I bought extra Red. Just in case.” Michael was already rummaging through his bag.

Rich’s eyes were widening. “If it helps…” he echoed. 

Michael handed Rich the bottle, passing it over Jeremy’s body. Rich eyed it, Michael unsure whether out of disbelief or suspicion. Finally, he decided to unscrew the cap.

“This is really okay?”

A sudden, inexplicable pang through Michael’s heart. “Yeah, go wild.”

Rich hesitantly lifted the bottle to his lips, and took a tentative sip.

“Did it work?”

“I… don’t feel any different.” 

Michael hummed and leaned forward. “Say something controversial.” 

Rich thought for a moment. 

And then: “I’m… bi. I’m bi.”

Michael felt a strange rush of pure terror or shock or  _ something  _ circulate through his veins before he rationalised and calmed down. Rich’s look of pure hope at that instance was doing things to him. He raised an eyebrow, off Michael’s silence.

“That’s something controversial?” Michael asked quietly.

“If how I treated you was any indication, yeah. It’s part of the reason why I took my SQUIP in the first place, actually.”

“You were…?”

“Yeah. But the SQUIP had me suppress it. Every time I thought about it…” Rich’s hands twitched. “Almost three years. Three years.” His voice began to shake.

“Oh… Rich, that’s fucking terrifying. I… Three years?” 

Rich just nodded grimly and reached behind his neck, moving his hair behind his shoulders in a quick motion.

Michael formulated a response while he watched Rich’s lips move soundlessly, repeating that same horrid thing: “three years”. It felt like some wicked mantra. Like a curse.

_ So much to unpack _ , Michael thought decidedly, breaking his gaze away from it all. How long had his fists been clenched like this? He uncurled them and winced at the red marks buried inside. The pain hadn’t registered. And that thought brought him back to Rich --  _ Why is it always Rich? Had it always been? --  _ and the horrifying thought of the illusion of agency. He’d seen documentaries, read countless papers at dead hours, watched every single video essay; the theory of it was palatable and easily understood. Easy to put it into a narrative, easy to reduce it to just a theme. It was always just a thing, an element of postmodern fiction, a glimpse into an unfeasible if not distant dystopia. But this was real life. To worsen things, Rich was only at the start of his life ( _ long _ , Michael hoped absently). Where it would probably be at least a little more manageable as an adult, Rich had doomed himself to a life of essential  _ torture _ . And, Michael thought, it would be so easy to blame Rich, like he himself had insisted. He  _ had  _ been a loser. He  _ had  _ chosen to buy the SQUIP. He  _ had  _ chosen to take it. He  _ had  _ chosen to listen to it. 

The fact of the matter was, they were still just kids.

He could see it in the pleading desperation in Rich’s eyes that night, echoing into Rich even now. It was a feeling that nobody their age should be close to thinking about. Michael remembered the explosion of false sympathy directly after the fire. It was just so normalised, the idea of casual suicide, casual mourning. Did Rich  _ know _ ? 

Rich had said “forever”. He’d be under the influence of his SQUIP  _ forever _ . Forever seemed like such a simple concept in theory. Now it was real, it was applicable. Would something like that night happen again?  _ Maybe,  _ Michael thought with a start,  _ Rich still feels like he needs an out _ .

“What’re you thinking about there?” His voice was too small.

_ The possibility that you still want to kill yourself _ . “Nothing much,” Michael deadpanned.

Rich just hummed, something like a smile hanging off his lips. “Yeah,” he said softly after a small moment, looking at Michael, before falling back on Jeremy.

Michael suddenly felt a pulse of pure anger circulate through his veins.  _ Why?  _

“Why are you talking to me?” he asked. 

“I was here first,” Rich replied, capping the bottle of Mountain Dew Red slowly. 

“Just how long have you been here? You’re fuckin’ creepy, you know that?” Michael stood up suddenly.

Rich just held out the half-drunk bottle.

“You expect me to take that back?” 

Rich shrugged. “I figured I could be the nice one.”

“You’re a fucking prick,” Michael hissed, snatching his backpack up. “Tell your stupid SQUIP I said hi.”

“Would if I could,” Rich called out, now behind him. Michael regretted letting him have the last word, but he simply didn’t care that much. The handle was uncharacteristically cold as he closed the door behind him with as much passive-aggressiveness as was appropriate for a hospital. Michael felt tired. He would come back tomorrow. He couldn’t -- wouldn’t talk to Rich ever again if he could help it. 

_ I’ve always been here for Jeremy and Jeremy only _ , Michael thought, before crushing the thought between his hands.

**Author's Note:**

> ... yknow..... like a liar
> 
> so my friend and i went to see a production of bmc at a local theatre. us watching voices in my head. rich and michael facing away from the audience. “boyf” on the back of rich’s wheelchair. “riends” on michael’s backpack. 
> 
> much to think about


End file.
